A FEW weeks ago, India and China held the 25th round of talks on the disputed Himalayan frontier. The dialogue deserves a careful reading, not reflexive alarm. What was actually agreed matters less than what it means for India’s posture, and what Pakistan does in response. The eight-point understanding is a process, not resolution. China’s territorial claims have not moved an inch. What has changed is the level of predictability.
For Pakistan, the easy read is the old one: China preoccupied with India is good for us. That is too simple, and it is the kind of thinking that becomes dangerous once it shapes policy. A permanently hostile China-India border is not cost-free for Pakistan either. It raises the odds of another China-India clash, adds further volatility on our northern approaches, and complicates the Chinese connectivity ambitions the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) itself rides on. A steadier China-India relationship is not automatically bad news for us.
The military question worth asking is not whether Indian troops will physically leave Ladakh for our border. They will not; not in any meaningful way. The real variable is bandwidth: fewer high-altitude troop rotations, redirected surveillance and air assets, and diplomatic and military attention shifting west. That is a slow, technical shift, and the place to track it is Indian defence budget documents and force posture, not the wording of each round’s communique.
Geography makes this our concern either way. Eastern Ladakh sits right at the junction of Chinese, Indian and Pakistani strategic systems. A calmer China-India frontier lowers spillover risk, which is good for our northern logistics. But that same calm could free up Indian attention elsewhere. Both things are true at once, pulling in opposite directions. But nothing suggests that Beijing is watering down its partnership with Islamabad to accommodate New Delhi.
Pakistan needs to do a few things, and none of them is new in kind, just a little bit urgent now. These include a consultative channel with Beijing to track the boundary process and what it means for us; quiet, senior-level reassurance instead of public appeals; and CPEC 2.0 delivering visible economic results so our value to China rests on performance rather than Indian hostility alone.
Besides, there should be deeper Central Asian connectivity through our ports; conventional and nuclear deterrence that stands on its own, not on the assumption that China will somehow keep India occupied indefinitely; and, finally, limited risk-reduction measures with India itself.
China and India are managing their rivalry. They are not resolving it. Our task is to stay indispensable to China on our own merits, and to build an effective deterrence that depends on neither Beijing’s goodwill nor New Delhi’s distractions.
Lt-Col (retd) Syed Raziuddin
Rawalpindi
Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2026
